Irresolute

It's hard to make plausible New Year Resolutions, I find. At least, it's hard to make the standard variety (diet, weight, healthy lifestyle, stopping lazy overuse of the words nice, lovely, delightful) when the fridge is still full of NYR saboteurs, such as the remains of the (nice) Christmas pudding and brandy butter, the cupboard still groans with evidence of an irrational fear that (delightful) guests will go hungry, and the heap of presents still includes the (lovely) boxes of chocolates you haven't succeeded in sharing with callers, because they have the same excessive and calorie-laden remnants, and the same pathetically-familiar Resolutions. It's impossible to get rid of a chocolate or a glass of sherry after January 1st, have you noticed?

My past performance stands accusingly before me too: I toyed with the idea of taking up some form of regular exercise, until I remembered that the only regular element of this old chestnut is the forgetting to do it. And about 20 years ago, I said brightly that "this year I will get my house finished!" and I've been saying it ever since.

So perhaps I won't bother Resolving anything at all this year. There are many things I could resolve to do, but they are so basic and workaday that they hardly make the grade for the traditional earnest New Year conversation. Maybe I should just Resolve to do what I know I should do anyway, but do it sooner, cheerfully, regularly, thoroughly. That way, I wouldn't have two-inch grey roots. I would have a bedroom that looks like an adult sleeps there, and not a teenager. I would have a filing basket that looks empty for much of the time, instead of like this:

and the well-travelled box of items that live in the boot of the car would have arrived at their real destination in the nearest charity shop before they disintegrate, yellow with antiquity, whole families of mice living in the - no, I exaggerate.

More wide-ranging or unusual Resolutions are easier to make, although no one believes them - Sandra's 18-year old has stated grandly that he is not going to drink alcohol again until May 26th; he can't quite understand why we all fell about laughing at this, because he Really Really Means It. Lesley is embracing the power of Positive Thinking this year - let's see how that stands up to one of her regular wars, short but savage, with her computer, which invariably emerges victorious. I disbelieve my more imaginative ideas (Italian, woodwork, singing lessons) before I've even formed them into sentences, let alone uttered them, so I don't bother.

So maybe I shall have a motto instead for 2010: I Won't Bother, Thank You. And who knows? Maybe some things will get done anyway. Anyone want a chocolate?